Nurturing incoming leads is essential to business growth, and the best way to do this is to set up workflows within a marketing automation platform like HubSpot. According to a report by Lenskold Group and the Pedowitz Group, 60% of marketers surveyed who use marketing automation say it has increased the quality of leads that get passed to sales. Yet, the Annuitas Group found that 64% of CMOs have either an informal or no process to manage their marketing automation.
Well managed marketing automation will result in more high-quality prospects coming to your sales team. If you are new to setting up workflows, you need to keep the following in mind:
1. Identify the end goal for each of your workflows
It is important to establish the end goal of your workflows from the beginning. By identifying your goal, you can better determine the type of content that should be used in that workflow. For instance, if your goal for the workflow is to convert a lead into a marketing qualified lead, you will not use the same content that you would if your goal was to convert a marketing qualified lead into a sales qualified lead.
2. Keep track of all of your content
In each workflow, content should target a specific stage of the sales funnel. As such, you should have a system in place so that you can easily track each piece of content and what stage it targets. This will help ensure that you have enough content for each particular stage of the funnel. You may want to create a spreadsheet to keep track of when the content was created, what topic it covers, and the funnel stage for which the content was written.
3. Become familiar with your workflow options
If you are using HubSpot, there are three types of workflows that you can choose from.
The standard workflow is triggered by the contact meeting some predefined condition, such as filling out a form or being added to a list.
The fixed date workflow nurtures prospects during at a specific calendar date. For example, a fixed date workflow can be created to send contacts on a list a reminder of an upcoming webinar.
The property-based workflow is triggered by a contact-date related property, not a specific calendar date. One way you would use a property based workflow would be to send a follow up email to someone whose free trial just expired.
4. Check performance and review content
Once you have set up your workflow, your job is not quite done. It’s important to monitor how it is performing and review content to ensure that topics are still relevant and data is still current. Review open and click through rates for emails to find areas where you can improve. You should also keep an eye on the spam and unsubscribe rates over time for hints that your content might need to be refreshed.
